Memory, Molly and Mum

When mum first came to stay, her short term memory was such that I was beginning to think that she would never remember that we had three dogs, that they lived in the house down south, that they had names, and that they had characters. She spent about six months calling them by their colour and forgetting about them completely, though she always loved having them around.  I was also not familiar with what Alzheimer’s patients can and can’t do. I imagined that if you had a terrible short term memory then you wouldn’t be able to remember much in the recent past: that would seem logical. This seems to hold true for some things but not for others. I’m sure she doesn’t know from one day to the next whether she has had breakfast, lunch or dinner. She certainly doesn’t remember if she has just had a cup of tea. She frequently forgets where rooms are. New names and faces are very confusing for her; and sometimes old ones can be as well. She has been known to tell me about what Lesley is doing just now. There is no point trying to teach her to do something new e.g. work the TV or DVD or make a cup of tea (mind you I have issues with all the remotes too). And definitely don’t try and teach her a new game of cards. Doesn’t work.

However some things she does remember. For example, she carries her wash-bag around everywhere, she constantly worries that it is safe, and it must either be in a safe place when we go out or it has to come too. She keeps all her letters, her Sri Lankan coins which she thinks are worth heaps of money (in reality about 50 rupees) and her comb in it. She must know where it is. When she inadvertently left it in the toilet in the Fortress I went into complete melt down and had the hotel staff checking everywhere till it was finally found.

The dogs though especially her relationship with Molly recently has demonstrated that her short term memory does work for some things: notably this little dog who is really on her last legs.  When I come in from work in Colombo these days, I get questions such as “And how were the dogs?” “What happened with Molly at the vet? “ “How is Molly?” She obviously thinks I have been away visiting the dogs – if only! There could be various reasons for this confusion.  We spent most of August with the dogs. Now we see them only at weekends. So she obviously thinks they are around; she just doesn’t know where. And as she is not really aware that she spends half her time in an apartment in Colombo and the rest of the time in a house in Unawatuna, it makes sense on one level to assume that I must be away visiting the dogs.

She has definitely picked up on the fact that Molly is special. She would say her favourite dog is Sandy who constantly sits with her and follows her everywhere; but Molly and mum have formed a special bond. They are both up there in terms of years. Mum just turned 85 and Molly 14 (98 in people years).  Having spent every morning over a month with Molly, mum knows that Molly has issues and has a special place in the household. At breakfast time, Chaminda cooks Molly chicken and bacon, mixes this with rice and then adds a boiled egg.  The other two dogs get nothing in the morning. I hasten to add that this is not because they never get fed; it’s just that Molly is underweight and her kidneys are failing and the vet says she has to increase her weight in order to maintain stability. Therefore Molly gets her syrup first which is shot down her throat with a plastic syringe; 50% of the time this fails miserably and the syrup goes everywhere. The theory is that this will settle her stomach and give her an appetite. I’m not convinced that this works. Then typically me and mum watch her and the other dogs closely to ensure that Molly and not Sandy and Crazy demolish the contents of the dog bowl.  They watch Molly hovering around the bowl but not eating. Eventually she will pick at it and even later she will actually more or less finish it. It is a major event getting Molly to eat. And it is repeated every morning we are down south.

Mum also has noticed that Molly goes to the vet a lot. Either I take her, which involves me doing a 4 hour drive up and down to Colombo, or Molly comes up during the week in a van driven by Nihal and accompanied by Chaminda (or in the last visit by Chaminda’s dad as Chaminda was away visiting his mother in law at hospital). This is not because there are no vets down south. There are. But I prefer trusting Pet Vet in Colombo who can do all the necessary tests on her there and then and can explain the various options to me in terms I understand. Their treatment has also been right so far. In December they said she might not last the month but the saline she gets and the constant monitoring is keeping her going. We have to phone up for the test results. Mum is interested in the test results. I don’t think she understands what they mean beyond if they are good or not. She certainly does not understand that Molly has failing kidneys and that the saline she gets in different amounts and frequencies according to how her last tests are, will keep her stable for a while but this is not going to last forever. The whole saline drama mum has also watched a lot recently. Chaminda and me sitting with Molly while her saline goes into her drip by drip - it takes a while. Now, mum says when the test results come back normal, “Oh that’s good - the little dog will feel better.”

Molly has developed a special relationship with my mum towards bed time. When we sit playing cards before mum goes to bed, Molly wanders into her bedroom to see if she is there then looks over at us as if to say “Isn’t it time you were in your bed? I want to go to mine! Hurry up!” When mum does make the move to the bedroom, Molly is there immediately. She gets on her bed and is most annoyed if I try to get her off so I can sort the sheets on the bed. And she’s there all night at the bottom of the bed. They both sleep a lot. She’s still there in the morning and she stays there till mum is up, showered and dressed and only then will she stir from the bottom of the bed and stand in front of mum while she tries to get past her on route to the porch to have breakfast.

Mum definitely worries about Molly. That tells me her short term memory still functions in some areas. And I reckon Molly worries about mum. Conclusion : empathy overrides short term memory loss.

red vented bulbul

Unawatuna in Sri Lanka is a far cry from Bothwell in Scotland. And the bird life is no exception. My mum spends a lot of time sitting on the porch here in the mornings and early evenings. I used to feel guilty that she had nothing to do and was always trying to get her to read magazines (which she can’t really do) or do jigsaws (if Himashi is around she enjoys this) or  write letters/ cards to friends (which again she can’t really do – she can sign something if I write it). I’ve let the guilt go now because actually there is a world to watch from the porch. The monkeys are always around somewhere. The birds as well provide a wealth of entertainment, action, colour and noise. I have no clue why people refer to the peace and quiet of the countryside. It’s anything but quiet. The visitors make a racket.

In Bothwell there were not so many varieties of birds. I remember magpies where we used to live. Counted them according to the old saying, “1 for sorrow, 2 for joy, 3 for a girl and 4 for a boy.” Was most upset when I only saw one.  Also blackbirds, sparrows, seagulls and pigeons occasionally and robins in the winter.  Here though you are raised to a totally different level of ‘birdlife’. 

The most common birds in my garden are the red vented bulbuls. I have a whole family of them – in fact probably generations of them. They nest in the kitchen in my fish mobile. So far they have produced 4 sets of chicks there. You know they are about to produce eggs when while washing the dishes you come face to face with one of them sitting on the bars of the kitchen window with bits of twig in its mouth. It looks at you most indignantly - you are blocking the route from window to nest. After a while they finish the renovation of the nest. Then the eggs will appear and the mother will spend lots of time sitting on them. You feel you are disturbing her. Then all hell breaks loose when the eggs hatch and there are squeaks from the nest and various bulbuls come flying in and out of the window all day feeding the open mouths.

There was a bit of a drama during my mum’s early stay here. The eggs had just hatched and the mother bird flew straight into the fan (very rarely do they go anywhere apart from the kitchen which does not have a fan) which killed her. This left me (and Chaminda of course) with the situation of small chicks needing to be fed. Chaminda ended up standing on the kitchen sink trying to dribble bits of papaya into the mouths of the chicks with varying degrees of success. Luckily for us, the father (I imagine) and one of the teenagers (again the imagination is being used here) took it upon themselves to take over the feeding of the chicks. So after a slow start the chicks were fine and are now flying around the garden.

Then we have the babblers which are a source of great amusement for my mum. They invade the garden and then disappear as quickly as they arrive. First a couple like scouts will be seen checking the place out then the rest of the flock will appear shreaking and bouncing up and down. They bound over the grass in large hops, chase each other through the bushes, leap on top of each other with great abandon, and generally look like a bunch of youngsters having the greatest of times. The dogs make themselves scarce when they appear.

Then there is the kingfisher (or in mum speak the ‘blue bird’ because of the flash of blue as it flies across the garden). It usually is seen perched on the gate looking in the direction of the pond. This usually is around the time we have stocked up the pond with fresh fish. It will swoop down and scoop up the small fish. I am fighting a losing battle here. The only fish to survive for any length of time in my pond is a rather substantial gold and black one.   The other ones become kingfisher food given time.

Other regulars include the pair of spotted doves who are building a nest in the rafters of the porch. They come and have a drink at the pond producing the rather incongruous sight of a real dove sitting beside a stone dove (present from a grateful visitor). They are always around.  The mynas are also frequent visitors at the bird table. (They are also unfortunately frequent victims of the southern expressway!) There are also lots of sunbirds who don’t come so close, but feast on a variety of colourful flowers like the pink ginger.

Then there are the more infrequent visitors. There are the parrots who do come from time to time to the bird table. Bright green and quite aggressive.  And the   Asian Koel who can be seen feeding itself at the bird table. The coucal can be seen wandering around the garden like an old man out for a stroll. The brown headed barbets are also frequent visitors and the red backed woodpecker pops in now and again. Sea eagles also hover overhead.

We await the arrival of the paradise flycatchers who arrive in the trees in November and leave at the beginning of the year. These birds are amazing to watch with their long tails that look like paper streamers weaving their way between the branches of trees. There are the Indian ones which have white tails and the Ceylon ones which have more chestnut coloured tails. Both appear in November and stay for the season like faithful tourists.  

You need do nothing to enjoy these visitors. Just sit on the porch. My mum doesn’t know their names  (neither do I if truth be told – but I can look up a bird book) but she does know their habits and can enjoy their colourful garden antics.

Monkeys

I remember childhood family visits to the zoo either in Edinburgh (where my aunt, uncle and cousin lived) or at Calderpark Zoo which was about ten minutes from where we stayed in Bothwell. Memories of these visits are mixed. I associate them with ice cream, lollipops and picnics under sunny skies (in Scotland?).  I loved the penguins and the chimpanzees. The incongruity of them being in Scotland was lost on a child’s mind. I hated the cages. As I got older I began to feel very uncomfortable visiting the rather sad looking animals in these places. And I have never much enjoyed invading animals’ space in the wild. To my shame I’ve been on safaris, mostly in Sri Lanka (the result – terrified, as the ‘World War 2’ Land Rover we were in did not look like it would last another minute and certainly would not have offered any protection from the leopard which I spotted before the guide or the too numerous elephants who surrounded us at one point), and Africa (the result – uncomfortable, as the fancy jeeps just seemed to encroach too much on the animals who I felt just wanted to be left alone to get on with their lives and could do without strangers in their noisy vehicles chasing them all over the place).  I prefer to respect animals’ privacy and leave them alone really. However I don’t mind them invading my space from time to time. 

My house down south is surrounded by a variety of wildlife. At any one time we can have squirrels, monkeys, snakes, monitor lizards, scorpions, parrots, sea eagles, bats, doves, kingfishers and paradise flycatchers. All sorts. Some are beautiful, some are scary, some are funny. Monkeys though – nightmare or amusement or a bit of both? The house is surrounded by trees which are the playground of a troop of monkeys. Of course the house and garden also become their playground from time to time, although with three dogs they are reluctant to actually come down to the lawn, unless there is a juicy piece of papaya lying on the ground. They love the jambu, mango and papaya trees. For my mum they provide hours of amusement and are a rare source of anticipated pleasure.

At breakfast, monkeys are a talking point. Are they in the trees in front? Have they been heard but not seen? Is there fruit out on the bird table for them? Will they be around later? The state of the blue water lily or “Nil Mahanel” in the pond is the other common breakfast topic. Is it open? Will it open today? Is there one just below the surface? But the monkeys provide much more amusement than the flower. They are often to be seen on the tall palm trees while we are having breakfast. Then when there is fruit out, you will see them swinging across the trees till they are perched in the jambu tree from which hangs the bird table. A quick tug of the wire holding the table and either a monkey will appear and climb down till it can reach the table and grab the fruit, or it will pull the table up to it so it can take the fruit.

When there are young ones around they can cause havoc racing along the wall of the garden and jumping over each other then clattering over my roof and my neighbour’s roof. They can swing so much from the trees and bushes that the branches break. My mum can be sitting on the porch quietly and I am in the study doing some work, when all of a sudden their presence is announced with loud deep throaty calls. They leap between the two jambu trees in search of other fruit trees. I am still trying to catch on photo one in flight between these two trees. By the time you click the camera they have reached the other tree. They clatter over the tiled roofs making such a racket you would think that there were millions of them. They are another thing that my mum counts. She will tell me how many have been on the wall recently, how many are up the palm tree, how many were swinging between the jambu trees, how many climbed down the wire, how many went over the neighbour’s roof, how many climbed along the telephone wire.

They are a menace though. Tiles fall off the roof, are broken, move so they are balanced precariously at the edge of the roof. Branches break, fruit is stolen. I came out one day to find one menacing monkey up a papaya tree with a whole papaya in its hand looking as if it was about to drop it on Crazy, my alsation/beach dog mix,  who was directly underneath and barking up at it.  We all try different ways of getting rid of them. Clapping hands, hitting trees with various objects, making loud monkey like noises, are all tried and tested local methods with varying degrees of success.  I tried the water hose at Xmas. At first it was effective then they seemed to decide that actually a shower was quite refreshing. And I couldn’t get the hose to stay on the tap so that just ended up as a rather frustrating experience all round. I came down one weekend to find Molly, my Emirati desert dog (no idea what she thought monkeys were – don’t get them in the desert!) who used to bark at the monkeys, going into trembling fits every time they appeared. I thought she had been attacked by a monkey. It turned out that our next door neighbor had gotten so annoyed with the monkeys that he had started shooting very loud fireworks at them every time they appeared. The noise freaked the dogs out. He did it so often that every time the monkeys appeared (regardless of whether or not he fired things at them) Molly would tremble with fear. Now she’s completely deaf so it doesn’t bother her.

We’ve had various dramas with the monkeys too. The most recent was during the two week visit of my brother and family. They rented the house next door (Hibiscus Cottage and on Trip Advisor just in case anyone is interested in a rental). This particular troop of monkeys that is around these days has one rogue monkey. He took to preening himself using their windows to view his reflection. Then he came half in the window which has bars. I said confidently to my brother and family, “Don’t worry, he can’t possibly get completely in.” Wrong! My brother’s wife was cooking quietly in the kitchen when she felt the palms of hands on her rear end. Turning, expecting to see my brother, she came face to face with this monkey.  We were all sitting on my porch next door when we heard the rather strangled cry for help. We rushed over to find the monkey sitting on one of the lamp shades in the house looking at us. Chaminda to the rescue! With the help of a large broom, he eventually managed to get it out by providing an escape route by opening all the windows and doors.

Nightmare or amusement?  I’m quite happy to have them around and much prefer having them invade my space periodically (as long as they don’t get too close!) than the other way round.

Food is a challenge these days. Both for my oldest dog and for my mum.  My mum has a healthy appetite but she will turn her nose up at certain things. She will also completely forget about food. It is not high up on her list of priorities. When I announce, “dinner!” she will invariably look surprised at such an idea and either tell me she has already had it or that it can’t possibly be that time of day. Just prior to her going into hospital the last time, she had lost tons of weight. She was forgetting to eat. The kids had tried to remedy that by having pre cooked meals delivered which she just had to put into the microwave. But of course it was all very well having food in the freezer; she had to remember to put it into the microwave which she invariably didn’t.  Molly, my oldest dog, has another problem. She does not have an appetite at all usually; she is underweight and has got kidney problems. So it is important she eats. She is the best fed in the house. She gets a cooked breakfast of chicken, rice and an egg every morning and I stand over her while she eats, closely watched by the other two dogs who are on diets and only get one meal a day. The fact that both of them have their meals provided for them at regular intervals keeps their weight up. It also makes me more aware of food.

I am a vegetarian; my mum isn’t. Therefore cooking in my household consists very often of making two different meals.  I’ve experimented a little with food for my mum. Recently though I’ve come to the conclusion that if you follow a few simple rules then usually this works:-

• Rule one: make meals that she recognizes - things that she would have had in Scotland, for example, mince and tatties, fish and chips, tuna mayonnaise and corn, sausage beans and chips, that kind of thing. These are the safe foods.
• Rule two: make meals that are easy to eat. Having broken one arm which has never really mended properly and done something to the other, she has issues cutting things up. She doesn’t do knives. She can just about manage a fork. Meals have to be something that you cut up for her and don’t make her chase it round the plate.
• Rule three: if you find something different that she likes, stick to it -  the margarita pizza at the Fortress has worked a treat for many a lunch. Does for me too.
• Rule four: don’t get worried if she has the same things every week. I used to try and vary her diet too much which neither of us appreciated for different reasons. She didn’t know what was on her plate half the time and therefore wasn’t keen on eating it; I was running out of ideas for menus and spending too much time dreaming new things up. As long as she gets plenty of fruit and veg, protein and carbs which she does then I reckon that’s ok.

Going out to eat is a challenge as well. Especially here in Sri Lanka. The menus are not the same as in Scotland and even when you think you are playing safe by ordering something that has the same name as something in Scotland, it can easily backfire. For example ‘fish and chips’ on the menu in Unawatuna beach restaurants is not Scottish ‘fish and chips’. The fish is not in a batter, it is not cod or haddock, it is not bone free, and the chips are not big chunky chips covered in tomato and/or brown sauce, vinegar and salt. She can’t stand the thin chips you get here. So selecting from a menu is tricky. A club sandwich is your best bet if it is on the menu. In fact even ordering a drink can be a challenge. I now order tea – though I wouldn’t everywhere. Tea in Sri Lanka typically comes with milk and sugar. It’s not a Scottish cup of tea.  A pot of tea can work as long as the milk and sugar is separate. She doesn’t do water or really any of the fizzy drinks. Milkshakes can work – she has a particularly refreshing ‘banana cooldown’ at the Fortress.

When my brother was here recently he reminded me of the days when her three kids were teenagers and we all came home for long holidays from our various universities or colleges. Those days our house was the base camp for all sorts of friends. It wasn’t a big house but there were lots of mattresses that could be pulled out whenever extra people came to stay. And there was always tons of food for all. How she did this on her primary teacher’s salary is a mystery. At any one time there could be an extra 5 or 6 people to feed, morning, noon and night. We didn’t eat fancy of course. We just ate basic food but there was always enough to go round and pots of this that and the next thing could be added to to go further. There was never a choice of food. Whatever there was, you ate. And she did all the cooking. She had made a point of not teaching me how to cook on the grounds that I was going to get a good job and not have to cook. That was a bit illogical and luckily I did learn to cook on the job so to speak as a student while working in a vegetable factory in Holland where I was ‘the cook’. I used to ask the 20 people I was cooking for every day what they wanted, get their oral recipes, shop and cook, running across to the factory to ask what to do next in the more complicated meals. This was on a 3 ring gas stove so represented a bit of a challenge but it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. Now I can happily cook for 20 but 2 or 4 is rather daunting. And I’m not too keen on ovens.

So in a sense the wheel has come full circle. She used to decide what we ate, shop for it and cook it. Now she would have issues doing any of those things. I now do this which is still a bit of novelty for me since having spent so much time living on my own and answering to no one, I’ve never really had to give the whole areas of shopping and cooking much thought. So although I still succumb to home delivered pizzas more often than I care to mention, I probably eat much healthier now than I have ever done in the past because I’m having to be more aware of the food that goes in front of mum.     

If anyone had told me this time last year that I would be playing regular games of rummy almost every day I would have said they were mad. However here I am. Hardly a day goes by when I do not suggest playing a game of cards to my mum. And not any old game of cards, it has to be rummy. I have tried to change the games occasionally and so have our visitors as it does get a bit monotonous. No other game will do though. If you change the game she will continue to play rummy rules to the new game and get herself confused when you try and tell her it is wrong. So I don’t change the game and I warn visitors not to. It’s not worth it.

I discovered the soothing effect of rummy when I used to visit my mum last year in Udston Hospital which offers long term care for elderly patients. She was sectioned there. During the day I would take her out for walks round Strathclyde Park and in the evening we would play cards. It both gave us something to do and it seemed to calm her down when she was getting in a state about something real or imaginary. Generally it gives her something to focus on I think and it is something she can control. It’s not too difficult especially when there are only two people playing. It focuses on numbers which she can still deal with. It is short. She can still win at it – again especially with only two people playing.

For me it works because you can play anywhere. A pack of cards is easily packed. Most of the time she goes into a card playing mode almost the minute the cards appear. I can also tell from how she plays how both her mood is and how lucid she is. Even if she loses if she has cards that are nearly there, then she is lucid. However if she has a jumbled collection of cards or she is throwing away cards I know she wants then she is having a bad day. She can be playful, putting down six cards and claiming to be out.

I have never known her to refuse a game of cards. “Oh I haven’t played cards in years!” is the usual retort to a suggestion of a game. The fact that she has played almost every day in the last nine months is completely lost on her. All sorts of people have learnt rummy in order to play with her. Shamalee, her Sri Lankan carer while I am at work, is now a dab hand at rummy. I discovered that mum had taught her adaptations of the game which were not quite correct when we actually all three sat down to play. When I come in from work, Shamalee is playing and I can just take over her hand. When my brother and his family came to visit, his children had to learn rummy. I watched and listened to the rather bizarre tableau of my brother sitting in between the two kids teaching them in Dutch to play rummy with my mum. The Dutch did not impact on her at all. She was more pissed off that my brother seemed to win all the time.  

I had wanted to provide here a history of rummy but a quick surf of the net produced no definitive answer as to where rummy came from. Mexico, Spain, America, Japan, China have all been posited as its country of origin.   http://rummy.com/rummyhistory.html  in fact concluded the following: “it can be said that Rummy games have been propelled by their popularity. They have travelled across geographic borders, carrying the games onward in a relay fashion whilst gathering variation on the way. “

This is certainly true of my experience. I learnt rummy as part of a card game playing family. I distinctly remember the card table we had in the house when I was growing up. It was a trolley which opened up to reveal a green felt covered table with space underneath for keeping all sorts. No idea what happened to that trolley. The amount of card and board games we played when we were growing up was quite something.  Cards then also came into their own when I began travelling. Small enough to squeeze into any rucksack and providing hours of fun anywhere, at any time, with anyone.  Killing time waiting on buses, planes, trains. Chilling out on beaches. Getting to know new people.  Learning new games in different countries with different people. It also travels well for my mum – cards come with us on any journeys – we never leave home without them.

It’s the Unawatuna Festival this week. How do I know this? Well, I can hear the monks chanting from wherever I am in the house. How does it impact on mum? From 8.30 in the morning to late in the evening, the monks at the temple on the beach chant. This is transmitted via loud-speakers from the far end of the beach, it reverberates in the hollow that is the beach and reaches us at the top of the hill quite distinctly. “Those men are at it again,” mum comments. And indeed they are. The festival lasts a week so I have another two days to go. For some reason it always sneaks up on me. Although I know it happens once a year in August and starts on the same day every year, it always surprises me. It started last Wednesday 2^nd August on Nikini Poya (full moon day) and marks the start of “Vas”, the Buddhist monks rainy retreats. It’s made me ponder festivals.

If asked, I would have replied that as a family we never really did festivals.  However like a lot of things, on reflection, life paints a different story.  I was born on Lanimer Day in Lanark and nearly got called Brenda as a result because she was the Lanimer Queen that year and visited me in the hospital. Or to be more precise she came to visit the William Smellie Memorial Hospital in Lanark, which was where my mum gave birth.   Lanimer Day, held on the Thursday between the 6th and 12 June, (in my case the 12^th) is a big local festival. The Lanimer Procession is made up of schoolchildren and others parading through the town in costume accompanying decorated floats and marching brass and pipe bands.  The roots of Lanimer Day lie (I recently discovered in Wikipedia) in the checking of the March stones which were the boundaries of the Royal Burgh. Beginning in 1140, it started as a day’s celebration but by the late 19^th early 20^th century the events had extended into a week.  So I was born into a week-long festival.

Halloween also holds a lot of memories. Getting dressed up as all sorts of things with the help of mother. My mum was a primary teacher and therefore was quite handy at making bizarre things like dalek outfits from cardboard boxes and bat capes from parachute satin (my dad was a navigator in the RAF during the war). One year I was the joker with a bright green jumper which I completely destroyed by drawing large question marks on it with black felt pen. Looked great though! It must have been a safer time then as I don’t remember any parents accompanying us on our tour of the houses for ‘trick or treat’.

Being Scottish we also went in for New Year in a big way. Pre-18 the three kids were all given avocat as a special treat at the bells. We would watch the Reverend I M Jolly on tv. One of my brother’s friends who had dark hair had to be sent out the back door and in the front door to be the lucky first footer of the New Year – Scottish New Year protocol dictated the first person in your house at the start of the New Year had to be dark haired to be lucky. He would carry coal or more likely shortbread out the backdoor and in the front door. Protocol also demanded the first footer to carry something as a present. As the three of us kids got older and moved away from home we were always back at New Year. I have no idea how mum put up with it but Xmas holidays saw our house full of people every night. There was a steady supply of sausage rolls and roasted cheese and branston pickle on toast for whoever was invited down after the pub shut. Looking back it must have cost her a small fortune because I don’t remember us as students ever contributing.

But back to today and the Unawatuna festival.  The village traces its roots to the great epic Ramayana. In the mythological epic so the story goes, Jambavan sent Hanuman, the monkey-warrior to India to bring back four medicinal herbs from the Himalayas to heal Lakshman who had been wounded trying to save Princess Sita from the demon king Ravana. Unable to identify the herbs, he picked the whole mountain up and took it to the battlefield in an attempt to save Lakshman. On route however, a bit of it fell down in present day Unawatuna; "Una-watuna" means "fell down". It changes from a fairly sleepy village in July into a hive of activity in August for that one week of the festival. The festival is usually preceded by a power cut which means they have overloaded the circuit testing the lights which stretch along the road and up the hill to the temple – reminiscent of Blackpool.  My brother, his wife and kids all accompanied Chaminda in the tuk tuk to see the local perehera last Friday. My brother went into knots as he misheard ‘perehera’ (procession) and thought I had said ‘pair of hairies’ (Glaswegian slang for 2 youths with a lot of hair). What was in the procession? Two elephants decked out in their finery, stilt walkers, whip crackers, Kandyan dancers, all sorts of kids doing traditional dances in brightly coloured costumes, all winding their way to the temple at the far end of the beach. The family had a great time.

Bit different from the Lanimer Day Procession; but both trace their roots to stones. 

Money money money

When mum arrived in Sri Lanka, as well as the dogs replacing her plastic owl in her affection, she acquired a pig.  She arrived in Sri Lanka at the beginning of December and on Xmas day, after much persuasion on my part, she agreed to come to Xmas dinner at a friend’s house in Unawatuna.  There were about 15 people invited and instead of everyone buying everyone a present each, we agreed to do a pot luck: everyone brought one present and they were put into a pot and we all had to choose one.  When it came to my mum’s turn, she pulled out this huge brightly coloured present.  After fighting valiantly with the wrapping,  a rather large, brilliantly gold, pig was revealed. This made my mum’s day. I have no idea what she was expecting –she hadn’t quite grasped that it was Xmas! She was over the moon with the big gold pig. It was quite a sight and must have been the most in your face present in the pot. It was of course a piggy bank. And so after Xmas day it took pride of place on her bedroom shelves in the house in Unawatuna. I added some coins to it periodically.

She became quite fascinated by the fact that the pig had money in it and I eventually had to teach her how to open the bottom of it and get the money.  It did not actually have that much in it: about 150 rupees at any one time (under one pound sterling). I would find her at all hours sitting on her bed counting and recounting the money and putting it into a small purse I had also given her. The purse she kept inside a toilet bag which would then come everywhere with us. She was so attached to it that I had to ensure that it came everywhere because, if she was without it and realized it, then either doom and gloom would set in or someone in the vicinity would be accused of stealing it.

It is not only money that she counts. Lots of things she counts out loud. To give a few examples.  A logical one is cards. When dealing out cards for a game of rummy, she counts the cards. This is quite useful. While driving, she counts the tuk tuks sitting at the side of the street waiting for passengers.  She counts the sets of steps on the highway. She has just recently taken to counting the bridges on the highway; however since there is quite a lot of space between them, this has not been very successful, as by the time we get to another one she has forgotten that she is counting them.

Last Friday on our drive down south we were both counting buses. We were driving south. The buses were driving north to Colombo. Normally the only buses on the highway are the special highway buses which are ultra -modern buses for Sri Lanka. However we weren’t counting them. There were 60 (we counted them) traditional Colombo Transport Board buses travelling north to Colombo. I have no idea why. It was pretty easy to count them as they were clearly numbered on their front windscreen. Of course they had somehow gotten mixed up and instead of passing us in order, 1,2,3,4,5 etc they were passing us all jumbled up, 3,5,7,4,33,34,23 and so on. I would love to know where they were going and why there were so many of them.

To get back to money. She is continually bamboozled and shocked by the prices of things in Sri Lanka. Currently the rate is 208 Sri Lankan Rupees to the pound.  We go shopping to Arpico in Colombo every week. This is a big supermarket and department store. She pushes the trolley and follows me round. She continually remarks on the cost of things exclaiming “220 pounds for a tin of beans….. that’s expensive, 1,500 pounds for a pot, we cant afford that….., 150 pounds for milk…” and so on. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that this is not pounds but rupees, she never remembers.   

This is the woman who brought up three teenagers on her own, managed her teacher’s salary to get us all through secondary school then into full time education and then into fairly decent jobs. She always said she would never borrow money as she never wanted to be in debt. Ironically it was when we discovered that she had gotten herself into massive amounts of debt that we realized that there was something wrong with her although even then we did not do much about it. Looking back, how idiotic her children were.  She got conned by spam mail promising her prizes of lots of money if she would just send 10 pounds, or 15.25 or some other small sum to the sender. This would put her into the running for the big prize.  She got about twenty of these letters every day  for years and must have replied to all of them. She bankrupted herself and ran up a huge bill on her credit card. She managed to hide it from her three children for years. It was only when on two occasions myself and my brother arrived and found no food in the house and the telephone cut off that we realized that there was something badly wrong.  We sorted her out and got her mail redirected to my brother. I am eternally thankful to the Post Office who, after I proved that I had Power of Attorney over her finances and health, bent their rules over the length of redirection and to this day continue to do so.

But back to the pig. The pig is now in Colombo. She decided to pack it (she loves packing her toilet bag – unfortunately the pig would not fit and therefore it had to sit in the back of the car) when we left Unawatuna one weekend and bring it with her. Its money has gone – it’s in her purse. The pig sits in pride of place on her chest of drawers in her bedroom there. I haven’t found anything to replace it on her shelves down south as of yet. However I am confident that something will turn up. 

The elusive big black tanker

I was never really aware that boats had played a role in my mum’s life until she came to stay.  But they certainly seemed to have done and still do.  The drive down south from Colombo to Galle touches the coast at the beginning and end of the journey.  That coastline is the major route for tankers and freight ships heading to the Colombo port. These huge vessels can be seen on the horizon dotted sporadically all along the south coast. Mum is fascinated by them, especially one huge black tanker she saw on her first trip south with me in the car. She has been looking for this particular boat ever since.  From time to time we catch glimpses of what might be ‘the black boat’. However she is never very sure that it is the same one. And of course it probably won’t be the same one as, whichever one it was, is more likely far gone by now to some distant part of the globe. 

I’ve been trying to track down the roots of this fascination with the big black boat. Her father was a diver and swimmer. He died when she was very young. She thinks it was something related to diving too much. She has always had a fear of water and despite my dad’s best endeavours, she only ever managed to swim a breadth of a pool. So water does not hold a fascination in and of itself.  In mum’s early life, there must have been trips to Dunoon, one of the traditional seaside resorts for Glasgow, supported by the busy Clyde steamers.  There must also have been the trip between the mainland and the Isle of Man for her honeymoon. She also told me about a very memorable Norwegian fjord cruise with her best friend at the time. And when she visited me in Naples, we had various trips on the hovercraft between Naples and Ischia and Capri and on the ferry between Pozzuoli and the islands.

When I think back to my childhood and early adulthood, boats played a sporadic but memorable role. There were the local Caledonian MacBrayne ferry rides between Gourock and Dunoon and Wemyss Bay and Rothesay for day trips or weekends away; there were the occasional international P and O ferry trips between Hull and Rotterdam to visit my brother in Holland, and between Dover and Calais for our one French and one Spanish holidays; there was a trip between Orkney and Thurso, during a visit to my other brother who was working in Dounreay, the nuclear power plant there, on something no larger than a fishing boat which was so rough it was unforgettable.  More recently mum followed the news reporting about the Costa Concordia in January this year with great concern and interest. Nothing however explains the fascination and search for the elusive big black tanker.

When we go shopping in Galle at the weekend the road is parallel to the sea though it is often hidden by buildings. Every time you can see the sea we watch for boats. Chaminda, our faithful tuk tuk driver, has obviously spotted this liking for boats and has noted it as a ‘mum’ thing as opposed to a ‘Lesley’ thing as prior to mum arriving I had never shown any interest in boats (except perhaps when the huge cruise liner comes, in which case it is more the incongruity of it in Galle Harbour alongside all the small fishing boats and the noticeably up market crowd in Seafair supermarket around the same time that sparks my interest). Yesterday Chaminda decided to pursue the liking for boats and, on route to Keels on the other side of Galle, he pulled up outside the Galle Harbour gates and asked if we wanted to go in. I have always assumed that since this is right beside the high security Navy camp that it was a no go area. However given the option we said yes and stopped at the security gate.

The navy guards looked at us rather suspiciously and I assumed Chaminda had got it wrong. This I often assume for some reason; however these days he does prove himself right about most things. They asked for my passport and I offered them my driving licence and British Council card (this has been known to open a few doors). After checking via a long telephone conversation and considerable frowning that this was acceptable, we got the nod to go ahead. They also asked for my mum’s passport to which Chaminda went into a long explanation about how she was my mum and I was working here and had been here forever. This they finally accepted and another man came with tickets. At 25 rupees each, this seemed very reasonable. So we went into somewhere I have driven past every weekend for years. The only time you got a peek inside was in the post tsunami days when all the walls everywhere came down and the coastline was fully exposed.

Mum loved the harbour. There was the big red and black cargo ship we had frequently seen on the horizon and from afar in the harbor. This turned out to be delivering raw materials and picking up cement from the Holcim plant on the outskirts of Unawatuna. Cranes could be seen lifting cargo off the ship. There was the ice plant which I had only heard about. We watched as the huge blocks of ice came out of the warehouse, were put into an ice crushing machine and the crushed ice was loaded into a truck to keep the fish fresh.  We watched the fishermen cleaning their multi-coloured boats which were about 6 deep in the harbor. A quick maths calculation produced about 300 small fishing boats.  There were the tugs, the navy patrols, the navy camp (from  a different angle). There was the fish being sold wholesale. The place was buzzing. Everyone was working, busy doing something – this in and of itself was a sight worth seeing.  Mum loved it and is still talking about “that busy place with the boats”.  As we left we both waved at the navy guards who waved back with big grins.

Now had the elusive big black tanker been there, it would have made both our days. However thankfully in a sense it wasn’t because, had it been, we would have had to stop there first on every shopping trip to Galle.

I must have stopped doing jigsaws at quite a young age. I remember though a period in my childhood when I spent a substantial amount of time doing them. I especially remember the ones that depicted different countries. I found them on Wikipedia recently. They were Waddington Jig-Map Puzzles which came out in the 60s and 70s. Over a period of a few years me and my brothers must have done lots of these, all depicting a different country. I remember making and remaking the jigsaws by fitting the Eiffel Tower piece into the correct part of France or Edinburgh Castle into the correct place in Scotland. After the country was finished, the oblong town names had to be slotted into the correct place on the map. I always felt a sense of accomplishment when the shape of the country and its innards labeled correctly were there laid out on the table. I imagine my parents thought this would help with geography at school; however the only thing I can remember from geography at school was the movement of flocks of sheep around Scotland – I remember wondering at the time how this could possibly be important knowledge to have and I’m still wondering. The jigsaws though may have made travel an early passion. Visiting those places was an early aspiration. I don’t think I have visited all the places I did jigsaws for but I must have been to quite a few.

Now after a gap of more years than I care to count, jigsaws are back with a vengeance. It was early on in my mum’s stay with me that I remember asking a friend who had just started working in a dementia care home in Scotland for ideas about how I could stimulate my mum and get her interested in doing things. She recommended a wonderful website www.active-minds.co.uk and the very patient and helpful Ben who runs it. He started it in 2009 after the time he had spent with his grandfather who had dementia highlighted the need for such products.  Its press is accurate : “It offers a range of award winning activity products specifically developed for people living with Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. …..[their] thoughtfully designed products provide an age appropriate activity resource for people with dementia, their families and carers.” The jigsaw puzzles were the first type of product that Ben developed. He then went onto develop memory cards (which help stimulate discussion), picture books (of the 50s and 60s), aquapaint (reusable water painting) and other products. I have tried a variety of them with my mum and we always come back to the jigsaws.

Not any jigsaw works though. Children’s ones don’t work - the images are too infantile and insulting to an adult. Adult ones don’t work either – they are much too challenging for someone with dementia. The Active Minds jigsaws are subtly different. The images are all of adult scenes – garden views, seaside scenes and sports amongst others. They also have a frame which depicts the border of the image making it much easier to see which bit goes where. They are sturdy – they need to be ‘cause they will be repeated. And they have large pieces and not too many. The first one I got was one depicting a mountain view. Both my mum and Himashi, our two year old next door neighbour, love doing it – over and over again.

You can also get personalized ones. Here, you can send the website a personal photograph and jigsaws will be made using your photo in 11, 24 or 35 pieces.  These are brilliant. They add a whole personal dimension to the actual puzzle. The first one I got done is of Sandy (my dog) sitting in the garden under the bird bath and bird feeder. This is the view you can see when sitting on the porch doing the jigsaw. You start with finding pieces to make Sandy, her body, tail, paws and a bit of her back. Then you go onto do the bird bath and feeder, then the tree behind that. Mum and Himashi love this one. It also comes up and down in the car to Colombo meaning that the Unawatuna garden view and Sandy (mum’s favourite dog) who are not normally a part of the Colombo scene have now been integrated into the Colombo living room.

We’re now awaiting the arrival of a jigsaw depicting the blue water lily or “Nil Mahanel” flower, botanically known as “Nympheae Stellata” which was declared the National Flower of Sri Lanka on 26th February 1986. As well as this claim to fame, it also lives in the pond next to the porch. Mum loves this flower (and I share her passion here) as it opens up in the morning to reveal the full lilac flower and then closes up again overnight. It does not last very long and I don’t have many in the pond so their appearance is always stunning and breakfast always includes a discussion about the possibility of one appearing that day or not. This jigsaw will be arriving hopefully with my brother and his wife and their two children at the end of the month. The fact that you can get personalised jigsaws made also adds another layer to the taking of photographs as these days any photographs become jigsaw possibilities. 

Post World War 11 UK must have been very different to what it is today.   My mum , when she talks of it, makes it sound an idealized picture of innocent pursuits and outside enjoyments. Now, we are talking about Scotland here, so although the way she talks about it sounds as if there was glorious sunshine all year round, I’m sure there wasn’t. I’m sure the memory has kept the good bits and jettisoned the bad.  That’s one positive of memory loss! Tennis is one innocent pursuit that took up a lot of her time when she was first married and before me and my two brothers entered the scene. It is one subject that once she starts, she can go off on a rambling monologue about the good old days. And it isn't just tennis – it is the whole social scene surrounding tennis in those post war years that her memory has captured.

She was a member of both the Larkhall Tennis Club and later the Hamilton Tennis Club.  My dad was too. They both must have spent a lot of time playing tennis. My mum remembers years of driving around Scotland visiting other clubs and playing in them. She remembers especially making the sandwiches and the cake for the men after the matches, the ladies clubbing together and each contributing something  -  a challenge due to the food shortages post war but also a delight as some food items had just become available again. She remembers the social events and the dances at the end of the season.  She remembers entertaining visitors from other clubs and being entertained by them - the entertainment often becoming as competitive as the tennis.  Strangely, she doesn’t remember much about the actual tennis. She still keeps in touch with her friends from her tennis days.  Flora and Annette, she talks about with special fondness.   

I played a bit of tennis when I was a teenager but it was never for me. Running around in the sun (again my memory must be playing up – sun in Scotland?? ) after a ball just seemed a bit pointless.  Mind you, these days, with the prizes up in the millions I can certainly see more point to it. Wimbledon though was watched by everyone in the house. My dad even travelled down regularly to London to attend it; I always planned on going there with him one year but never did.  I remember Bjorn Borg, the cool Swede, and John McEnroe, the fiery Yank, especially. The 1980 final where Borg (aiming for his fifth Wimbledon win) beat McEnroe (in his first Wimbledon final) was a major event in our household. It was exhausting!  Wimbledon was never rained off in those days (again memory loss perhaps.)

Tennis for my mum these days holds her interest in a funny sort of a way.  She cannot follow a match and tell you who is winning or losing; she doesn’t know the names of the players anymore although she does try to pronounce them when they come up on the screen; she can’t tell the difference between Wimbledon and the Dubai Open; and she doesn’t know a drop shot from a backhand.  But she still gets a huge kick out of it. She can still appreciate a well-played point though she doesn’t quite appreciate that it is a game, set or match point.  She can still gasp at an effective overhead smash and take a sharp intake of breath at a series of fast volleys. She can enter into a discussion about the ball being in or out. She has a huge issue with Serena Williams’ hair and worries about the person in the direct line of fire of the aces. She knows Andy Murray has a brother who also played tennis; she knows his mum will be watching him. But when she sees her in the audience she doesn’t know who she is.  She knows she was a coach.

She doesn’t quite get the excitement around Andy Murray being in the men’s final. But we will certainly be watching him tonight. My very Scottish tendency to avoid big sports events where Scotland is playing because it is too depressing has been overcome this once.  Win or lose, we will be cheering him on. And so will the rest of the family. John and Dorothy have already hung a huge Scottish flag outside their house in Holland. Robert and Julia will be watching somewhere in Scotland where they have gone for a week’s R and R. Carolyn and Sam will be glued to the screen on the outskirts of Edinburgh.  My dad will be there somewhere cheering him on. A Scot in the final of Wimbledon – such a pity he didn’t live to see that day. There will be both ecstatic and suicidal (the Scots are a dour lot!) text messages bouncing to and fro between Sri Lanka and Scotland depending on points won or lost.   In the end though, win or lose, he made it to the final.  

Both my mum and me enjoy driving. Always have. We were taught by my dad who ran a driving school outside of school hours (he was officially a PE teacher). Nearly caused their divorce – as it turned out that was only delayed.  We also share a liking for small blue cars. This stems from both a general lack of finances and an inability to parallel park. Why blue? Don’t know  - except I was raised in a house with 3 Glasgow Rangers fans so green was never an option.  Owning small cars though has never put us off driving long distances.

Probably the best holiday in my childhood was spent at a caravan park near Frejus in the south of France.  I was 11 years old, making my brothers 9 and 8. My mum, having just split up from my dad, saw an ad in the paper for a caravan rental.  Never having driven anywhere longer than a Glasgow- Edinburgh round trip on her own, she decided to drive the 3 of us to the south of France in what must have been the smallest car available at the time – a Fiat 500. Being the oldest child, I was designated navigator, responsible for reading the map!  We got as far as Dover and, while looking for a place to pitch our tent before getting the morning ferry, we followed a sign we thought said ‘campsite’ only to find ourselves in a restricted security area with a rather unfriendly chap with a gun.  We settled for sleeping in the car in the ferry car park.  

Hitting Paris though is what I remember the most. My navigation skills did not improve.  We ended up on the Boulevard Périphérique, one of the busiest highways in Europe.  In my memory we went round and round for hours!   I googled it recently and discovered it takes 26 minutes to go round the whole circle driving at the speed limit. So we could easily have been on it or hours. We could not stay on it forever and so we got off it but given the options of west and east (no south), we got back on it again.  I think it was pot luck that we did manage to find a road going south because it certainly wasn’t the result of me reading a map.  We did eventually arrive in Frejus and had a wonderful holiday. 

Now, over 40 years later, I am driving the small blue car, this time a Maruti Suzuki  800. Our weekly round trip is from Colombo to Unawatuna on Friday afternoon and back again on Monday morning. It’s 120 kilometres along the south west coast of Sri Lanka - a good 2 hour drive.  My mum sits happily in the car commenting on the idiotic driving of others and reading as many of the signs around her as possible.  She likes the Singer signs especially and they can prompt a monologue on Singer in Glasgow. She reads aloud the brand names of the cars we are driving behind or alongside –  “Sunny,” “Tata”, “Caravan”, “Isuzu.”  She reads the road signs even when they are a bit of a challenge – “Thimbirigisiyaya”, “Bauudalokha Mawatha”. Her comments often surprise me.  “They all add up to 7!” she says out of the blue.  When asked,  “What add up to 7?” she states as if I am a complete idiot, “3 and 4 is 7; 6 and 1 is 7, see on the number plate,” pointing to the car in front of us.

Although we sit in the same car, our perception of the round trip could not be more different.  In my reality we drive from the centre of Colombo, south through the suburbs of Colombo (Dehiwala, Mount Lavinia, Moratuwa, Ratmalana) and over the bridge into Panadura. Then we turn inland heading for the highway.  This opened last November two weeks before mum arrived in the country. It has shortened the trip considerably.  One hour along the highway you end up in the outskirts of Galle. Turn left when you hit the coast and you are soon in Unawatuna and at my house.

 In my mum’s reality we start in Colombo (I think), the suburbs become Wishaw (for those not in the know Wishaw is in central Scotland) accompanied by indignant comments of “hasn’t this place been looked after”, “why is there so much wood lying around?” Then we reach the stretch past ‘Wishaw’ on the coast. Here mum looks for the big black tanker that is her favourite. If that is not available, other tankers will do. Luckily outside of Colombo loads of them queue up waiting to get into the harbor. Then when we hit the highway, we are in China with comments on “those Chinese men have been busy.”( I have a vague notion that I may have said the road was started by the Chinese as I can’t think of any other reason why she would associate China and the highway.)  Initially this stimulated a monologue about her uncle who had gone to China as a sailor. On the highway, we pass the rather incongruous signs for Macwoods Clyde and Macwoods Culloden and we’re back in Scotland.  It is a multi-national journey!

The many steps along the highway fascinate her. Bit of a mystery to me too actually. Along the sloping sides of the highway, the steps climb to the top. Some of them are in fact drainage tracks. Others though are definitely steps.  My brother came up with a plausible explanation – the landscape gardeners need to cut the plants and grass back. On her early highway trips, mum would spot and count the number of instances of steps.  After the highway you drive straight to the sea. All of a sudden there it is stretching across the horizon in front of you.  And with the sea we are back at spotting the tankers. It’s always a delight when there on the horizon is a big black tanker.  Makes both our days! It’s quite a journey from my mum’s point of view.  

France and Sri Lanka - very different journeys, same small blue cars.  

On Wednesday one of my friends came down from Jaffna for an evening in Colombo.  We had one glass of wine, before going out to the Gallery for dinner, and joined my mum and Shamalee, her carer, who were watching South Pacific.  We almost had to be dragged away – watching those old musicals these days, it’s amazing what they managed to get away with.  The songs definitely have variety: from the haunting ‘Bali Ha'I’ which I still l can’t get out of my head, to the classic ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and the raucous ‘Bloody Mary is the Girl I Love’. The setting is gorgeous – in reality a fusion of Hawaii, Fiji and Ibiza topped up with glorious Technicolour. And the story has it all – a romance set to the backdrop of World War II between a nurse and a mysterious Frenchman who the allies are trying to recruit for a dangerous military mission.

I would never have described either myself or my mum as lovers of music or as romantics. In fact if anything I would say if asked that I was not a music lover and I would describe both of us as complete cynics where romance is concerned.  However, incongruous as it may seem, something that we both have a penchant for is musicals. I was reminded of this forceably during what was to be the last time I visited my mum in her own home. As a result of a fall from the loft in my mum’s house, I ended up with a smashed ankle and broken leg (in 3 places) and in plaster, which meant I was stuck in Scotland for the longest time since I had lived there in my late teens. Mum coincidently had a broken arm at that time as a result of a fall while she was out walking.  We made a fine pair and could only really handle the kitchen with a combination of our good limbs. I was there for 6 weeks and luckily being freelance I could work from anywhere.  Frequently I would be working away to the sounds of Mama Mia at full blast coming from the living room or the music of Strauss from Andre Rieu concerts. This was back in the days when mum could still make the DVD work and neither of us really appreciated the toll of the alzheimers.

So when she came over here I had both pieces in stock. Now unable to work the TV/DVD/satellite, I put the DVD on for her and she becomes immersed in the music. So immersed that it is only after I begin hearing the same loop continually that I realize the DVD has in fact finished.   She used to be a lover of spy and detective stories, police and detective series on the TV; she could always work out who had done it long before the plot had unravelled. However since alzheimers, she really cannot follow a storyline anymore so most DVDs and tv series just don’t work for her.  We have taken to watching the Lifestyle Channel (TLC) with its cookery programmes, its top 10 hotels/beaches/festivals etc., and travel destinations. We watch the BBC News which I’ve now discovered actually confuses her – she convinced herself that people were going to break into the house and kill us both at one point and when probed this stemmed from watching too much news about Syria. She has though developed a liking for George Alagiah.  Mama Mia and the many Andre Rieu DVDs however are the old faithfuls when nothing else works. She especially loves the concerts from Vienna where she spent a magical summer one year with her friend. But after 6 months of Andre Rieu and Mama Mia, we were both getting a bit tired of them all.

This is how I rediscovered musicals. They have music, dance, colour and the storyline is not really that important. Music seems to be retained in memory for a longer time than stories. Amazon is wonderful. I quickly found a Rogers and Hammerstein box set with such classics as South Pacific, Oklahoma, The King and I and Carousel.  This arrived in Colombo and I dashed to the apartment to put one on the DVD there, only to find that it was ‘the wrong region’ so we had to wait till we came south to my other DVD which has been set to ‘all regions’ before we could actually play them.  These have proved a big hit. She can’t really follow the plot but she loves the music and the dancing. She also recognizes the music and realizes that she has seen them before and sometimes even remembers where and when. For example she remembers going to the stage version of South Pacific in Glasgow with my brother and his wife. So I now have the ‘good’ box set down south and a pirated set bought in Colombo which will play on my DVD there. The pirated set also has the words at the bottom so she can sing along - it was also a lot cheaper than the 'good' set.

I then started remembering my childhood. When I got badly stung by wasps all over my face, she took me to the cinema to see South Pacific;  Sound of Music was one of the first albums we had in the house; wet Glasgow Sunday afternoons were often spent with the feet up on the couch watching old musicals.  As a young woman she enjoyed Scottish country dancing and was always proud of her “Smith” legs. In fact both her and my dad did a lot of Scottish country dancing.   She had a season ticket for Scottish Opera and used to go with her friend to every opera of the season. She went on a bus trip to Vienna to listen to the music. So why do I think of her as not musical. Maybe she should be described as, deep down, a lover of music and possibly also a romantic at heart.